The Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC stamped its supremacy in financial disclosure at the CA Sri Lanka Annual Report Awards this week, winning the coveted overall award for the best annual report by a Sri Lankan company in 2016 and three other awards including the Edmund J. Cooray Memorial Trophy for the Best Annual Report among banking institutions.

The Bank received the Gold award for Management Commentary and the Silver award for Integrated Reporting - Best Disclosure on Capital Management, at the 53rd edition of this prestigious awards ceremony of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka, continuing its consistent run of success in this sphere.

This is the ninth time that Commercial Bank’s Annual Report has been judged the best in Sri Lanka overall and the 13th occasion the Bank has been presented the Gold Award in the Banking Sector by the country’s apex professional body in the domain of accounting.

Accepting the top award on behalf of the Bank, Chairman Mr Dharma Dheerasinghe said:

“The Annual Report is the single most important document and the means of communication with the stakeholders of any institution.

With regard to banks, there is a wide group of stakeholders such as shareholders, depositors, borrowers, employees, other financial institutions, regulators, government agencies and suppliers that we need to address.

In communicating with such a wide group of stakeholders, we put in a lot of effort to ensure adherence to the accounting standards, transparency, good governance and sustainable business practices, relevant disclosures and timely reporting.”

He said the Bank has been benchmarking its Annual Report against those of companies in many other sectors locally and globally, in its efforts to continually improve the standards of reporting.

“We have also taken cognisance of the fact that present stakeholders are not interested merely in the past, but require information on future prospects of a company and hence, modern trends demand more disclosures relating to the future,” Mr Dheerasinghe said.

The CA Sri Lanka awards reflect effectiveness in communication of financial and non-financial information to stakeholders and strict compliance with legislative requirements and accepted accounting best practices.

In evaluating reports for the awards, CA Sri Lanka looks at the organisation’s ability to effectively communicate organisational objectives, highlights, performance, personnel and management to an intended audience.

Held since 1964, the CA Sri Lanka Annual Reports competition is considered a platform which encourages excellence in the presentations of information covering transparency, social accountability and good governance among diverse Sri Lankan business entities in the field of financial reporting.

The only Sri Lankan bank to be ranked among the Top 1000 banks of the world for six years consecutively, Commercial Bank operates a network of 259 branches and 720 ATMs in Sri Lanka.

The Bank has won more than 30 international and local awards in 2016 and 2017 and has over the years received multiple awards as Sri Lanka’s Best Bank, Best Trade Bank, Strongest Bank and Most Respected Bank from a number of local and international institutions and publications.

Commercial Bank’s overseas operations encompass Bangladesh, where the Bank operates 19 outlets, Myanmar, where it has a Representative Office in Yangon, the Maldives, where the Bank has a fully-fledged Tier I Bank with a majority stake and Italy, where the Bank operates its own money transfer service.